Music & Nightlife

2008
24 Black

Dennis Haysbert’s claim that the character he played on the popular TV show 24, a black president, “paved the way for presidential hopeful Barack Obama” is old news.
However, if this is true, if 24 prepared many American minds for the arrival of a black president, it means that the most popular piece of Bush-era entertainment (it was concocted by two staunch Republicans) completely/terribly/unbelievably backfired (even with the assassination of the fictional black president).

Aristotle was right: once you put something into the world (an act, an action, a drama), it becomes (and does) its own thing.

Charles,
By Haysbert's and Aristotle's logic then, Geena Davis should have paved the way for a female President by portraying the Presidential character in the TV show "Commander-in-Chief". Not sure she said anything but it hasn't come to pass yet. For the record, we've had at least four presidential candidates with African-American heritage run since 1968(?). They are the late US Rep. Shirley Anita Chisholm, Lenora Fulani, an independent, Rev. Jesse Jackson (2X?) and Rev. Al Sharpton.

Backfired? I'd guess the Republicans were as prepared for the arrival of a black president as the Democrats. I've no doubt they were sincere in their earlier admiration for Colin Powell (that guy mentioned as a potential candidate in days gone by), for example.

Please do not post season-making spoilers to recent major TV series. Some of us have been saving up all that good content for the next time they get relly sick and and plow through 3 seasons of TV on DVD in a week.

#1: Afraid so. Watch with the audio commentary on when the creators are talking. Bummed me out too because I enjoyed the first season, but it kinda makes sense when you consider the world-view it's based around. The "ticking time-bomb" justification for torture is pretty much the basis for the entire show.

Still, though, anyone that watched the show (especially the first few seasons) would be hard-pressed to find any evidence of a conservative/republican agenda. I don't want to give away any more whoppers, but suffice it to say the 24 enemies are not Bush's enemies.

Maybe I'm being naive, but I think the creators' first priority was to create an entertaining, compelling show, and not a platform for the Republican agenda.

As someone else pointed out, I think it's a mistake to assume that the Republican platform is racist; Republicans are classist. They hate poor people. Minorities are disproportionately poor, so it looks like Republicans are always out to fuck them, but I think the causality gets mixed up in people's minds -- especially liberals, who tend to be obsessed with identity politics.

That all fits in well with a theory a friend of mine espouse: that the reason so many people were happy with the early years of the Bush presidency was because they were busy watching "West Wing" and thought -- on some level -- that Martin Sheen & Rob Lowe were the ones running the nation.